Submit your ideas to engage kids in creative adventures!

Here are two “Brain Food” examples to get you thinking:

MUSEUM MAKER
Find or collect “artifacts” or works of art that are interesting to you. Some people collect shells, postcards, buttons, pictures, or figurines. Decide what you think is important about each artifact or work of art and make labels or signs to go with them. If you would like to give your museum visitors extra information about the objects or art, dive into some research! Arrange your objects or art in a special space, on walls, tables or surfaces where they look good to you. Spend time thinking about how your museum is arranged. Do objects that are similar in some way belong near each other? Where do you put your favorite item? How can you feature your objects the best with light or color? How will visitors look through your museum from start to finish? You can also lead tours through your museum to talk about the objects with your visitors. Be sure to ask them what they see that they like, and why.

HEAR ME ROAR
Go on a hunt to find your own voice. Our ability to make an amazing range of sounds with our voice is often under-explored. Think about the places you’ve been that made you hear your own voice in a new way – your bathroom, a hallway, under a bridge, or in an echo-filled canyon. If you have it, use paper or poster board to create your own megaphone and think about giving your voice a new character in this space. You can use your voice to sing, make noises, tell a story, or let others know what’s on your mind. How far can you make your voice travel? How many different tones can you produce? Can your voice bend around walls? What environments create the most echo? A group of voices who perform together is called a choir or chorus. With a few other friends, you can momentarily claim rooms, alcoves, tunnels, archways, or fields with your new found voices.

Read more Brain Food examples here.

Guidelines for Contributions:

In short, submissions all must include the following elements:
Creative Activity/Exploration + Easy-to-Find Materials + School Subject = Brain Food

The activity should be unique, easy-to-understand, and relate visual art, dance, theater, music, media or design to one or more subjects kids learn in school. Some example subjects are: Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Civics, Cooking, Foreign Language, Geology, Geography, Journalism, Math, Nutrition, Oregon History, Physical Education, Reading, Social Studies, Spelling, Theater, U.S. History, World History, Writing

-Whenever possible make the challenge relevant to the Portland community. This may mean including specific geographic locations and landmarks, history, or environmental details specific to the Pacific Northwest.

-Materials needed to complete the challenge should be easy to find.

-Challenges should focus on creative process rather than final results.

-They should be applicable to children in grades K-8 and performed under the guidance of a parent or teacher.

Submission Instructions:

Email your contribution(s) to socialchange@portland.aiga.org in text form, and attach any relevant images. (Images may or may or may not be used in final implementation). Provide your title for the challenge, and your full name. Once submitted, the challenges/activities will be evaluated and edited by Right Brain staff and teachers. If your submission is chosen, you will receive credit for being a contributor in the final physical piece.

If you have any questions about the above, email Melissa at mdelzio@portland.aiga.org
Remember, keep it simple and fun!
Thanks,
AIGA Portland & The Right Brain Initiative

Background

This project was initiated by the AIGA Portland’s Social Change Committee members Melissa Delzio, Brittany Hanson, and Tina Le. The committee sprung from a national AIGA call for designers to engage more in efforts of social change in their communities. As critical thinkers, artists, professional communicators, and designers have a unique skill set that can utilized by many non-profits. The AIGA Portland Social Change Committee has chosen to partner with The Right Brain Initiative because of their impact on local schools and focus on the arts. To find out more about The Right Brain Initiative visit their websitehttp://therightbraininitiative.org or email Rebecca Burrell rburrell@racc.org.

52ltd had a great opportunity to collaborate with Nike(RED) and Cascade Aids Project on an art piece for a great cause. Since 1990, the Cascade AIDs Project (CAP) has organized an annual art auction aimed at raising money to further HIV/AIDs education and to provide vital support services to those infected or affected by the disease. This year’s auction on April 30th at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum was the organization’s largest ever with over 300 unique pieces of art and an attendance of  over 2,000. A long-time supporter of CAP and their mission, Nike shares a companywide commitment to promote public awareness and community participation in the ongoing fight against HIV / AIDs. In addition to sponsoring this year’s auction, Nike’s own Tim Hershey took on the role of Honorary Chair. Wanting to contribute a piece of art themselves, Nike’s 300 person Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender and Friends (LGBT&F) employee network, partnered with 52ltd to design a larger-than-life art installation that was displayed at the event.

As a company with deep ties in Portland’s vibrant creative community, 52ltd commissioned local designer and sustainability advocate, Owen William Fritts, to lead the creation of the art installation. Inspired by nature and the power of collaboration, Fritts takes an organic approach to design, using chanced-upon materials to form woven structures. The sculpture created for CAP and nike(RED) is known as the STORYpod.

With help from the greater community, volunteers of all ages participated in the making of the STORYpod. Branches were harvested, weaving sessions were held, and finally the pods traveled around Portland for ‘lace up’ events. Everyone was invited to write a personal message of encouragement, hope, or memorial to share how HIV/AIDS has impacted their life, and attach it to the pods with nike(RED) laces. The pods were then gathered for the final installation at Memorial Coliseum. The end result is a living, growing, organic 3D -“AIDs quilt” like no other.

52ltd would like to thank everyone that played a part in bringing this project to life:

THE SEVEN STEPS TO MAKING IT “OFFICIAL” (Or, Designspeaks with The Official Manufacturing Company)…Brought to you by 52 ltd. and AIGA

Because, in pure and simple terms, you do not want to miss this one. You’ve come to know Designspeaks for its diversity of speakers, each sharing their own unique perspective. From Byron Ferris to Jelly Helm, Aaron Draplin to Frank Chimero, Modern Dog to Patrick Coyne, Designspeaks has set out to introduce and re-acquaint. To inform and engage. To gather and celebrate the most intriguing thinkers and makers within our region. And if anyone is makin’ it real, it’s the fine gentlemen of OMFGCO… here’s a peek behind the curtain:

We are The Official Manufacturing Company.

We have the necessary documents.

We are thing makers.

We are Mathew Foster, Fritz Mesenbrink, and Jeremy Pelley, although not necessarily in that order.

We are on the same team and have already won the game.

We are out of jail.

We have reviewed our past mistakes and taken notes.

We receive sporadic recognition for our unrecognized genius.

We floss, both literally and metaphorically.

We consider the facts.

After having separately worked for some years for Wieden+Kennedy, Ace Hotel and a handful of other fantastic places, we now know exactly what we’re doing. More or less.

In October of 2010 we are opening a bar for sporting enthusiasts with our friends Jack Barron (co-owner of Ace Hotel) and Nate Tilden (of Clyde Common) and we are calling it Spirit of 77.

Who knows what we will do after that. (We do.)

Join the fellas of OMFGCO, together with 52ltd and AIGA:

When: Thursday, September 30. 7:00-10:00 p.m.

Where: Cleaners at the Ace Hotel 403 SW 10th Avenue (and Stark Street) Portland, Oregon 97205

How much: Don’t let the absurdly low price of admission hold you back. The beer and wine is free.

AIGA Members $15

Non-Members $25

Students $10

A selection of light nibbles, beer, wine and non-alcoholic beverages will be provided. ID required for beer and wine. As if that isn’t enough, we’ll be giving you stuff. Want to know more? Come on out! Besides, unless you’re generally foul-tempered or deathly afraid of handsome crowds, you will certainly not be disappointed.

Planning to Attend? Please RSVP via email to ashley@52ltd.com and include your full name and whether you are an AIGA member. Payment will be accepted at the event. We will make every attempt to accommodate walk-ins. Reservations will close on Wednesday, Sept. 29.

ONLINE REGISTRATION WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR THIS EVENT. We will accept cash and checks at the door. Unfortunately, we will not accept credit cards for this event. For the AIGA member discount, you will need to bring your AIGA membership card.

About 52 Limited

52 weeks a year, 52 Limited is busy connecting our stable of freelancers with assignments in Portland, up and down the West coast, and now in, New York. We offer freelance and fulltime talent and can also pull together customized project teams to fulfill the needs of our agency and brand clients alike.  As far as talent goes, 52 is located neatly at the intersection of left brain and right brain, representing both creatives and the more cerebral thinkers of the creative industry. Contact us at www.52ltd.com.

About Designspeaks

Showcasing the most intriguing design voices in the Pacific Northwest, Designspeaks was developed to inform, engage, and inspire. The small-talks quarterly series delivers an intimate venue intended to connect to others, to see what they are doing and how they’re doing it. Some speakers will be household names and others will have managed to maintain a lower profile. Either way, all will challenge you to think a bit differently about design and its impact on this region.

Unfortunately 52 isn’t involved in this at all.  And unfortunately the tour doesn’t stop in THIS Portland.  But anyone can submit  and I know of a bunch of folks that should!!  Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that 52 NYC will represent when the tour makes a stop in Brooklyn.

Many of you may have already heard about this, if you haven’t here’s the deal:

Thousands of sketchbooks will be exhibited at galleries and museums as they make their way on tour across the country.

After the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be barcoded and available for the public to view.

Anyone – from anywhere in the world – can be a part of the project.

To get more information or to enter (do it… I would if I were extremely talented like you) go here: SketchbookProject

This week in NYC, 52 LTD is attending Internet week.  Internet week is a festival of events celebrating NYC’s thriving internet industry and community.

Check out Internet Week’s Happenings

Located at Metropolitan Pavilion, Internet Week HQ features two main areas: Interactive Playground of 12,000 square feet of exposition space. This space will be both a place for attendees to meet, greet, and get a little work done, as well as hosting arts, technology, media and entertainment exhibitions and social events.

Topics range from Custom Silverlight controls, to a day dedicated to “IAmEffed.”  All this and more.. including parties galore scattered throughout various venues across Manhattan.

Watch it here:  Nike Football, Write the Future.

Those who are not Football (or Soccer, as most folks in in the US of A tend to call it) fans yet…  here’s a brief glimpse into the passion that exists for this sport.  This is an amazing spot that really lays out the love of the sport for us laypeople, through the eyes of those all over the world that live and breathe football.

The folks at Motionographer.com write:

“Although this film has only been bouncing around for about 24 hours, it’s already been garnering claims of one of the most epic spots of all time. This World Cup Anthem features Drogba, Cannavaro, Ribery, Rooney, Walcott and Christiano Ronaldo who even cameos in a Simpsons episode within the spot. Who else to bring it to you but Nike and the folks at W+K Amsterdam who brought in the heavy hitting leadership of Alejandro G. Iñarritu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel) to direct.

Since the birth of the swoosh, Nike has always been about the big and simple idea. As they’ve evolved, the executions may have become more elaborate, but the ideas have remained universal and pure. This spot is no exception. W+K Amsterdam examines the phenomenon of single moments changing the world. In sports, these moments literally resonate through the hearts, eyes and minds of millions in a single moment.”

New York City. The fresh smell of the subway on a hot day, the access to bland bodega coffee and New Jersey just a short hour away. Why did I move from Portland again? Although I miss the smell of fresh air, access to the best coffee culture nationally and snowboarding just a short hour away, the large overwhelming Italian family called (or pressured depending on how you look at it). What better way to reconcile my love of Portland then to open a branch of 52 Limited here in Manhattan? So here we are in a city that never sleeps, as experienced for the first time last Saturday with my friend Gina. I’m no spring chicken anymore. Regardless, I am very excited to be part of the 52 team once again and to be working with a close friend and now colleague, Ami Werner.

We have hit the ground running developing relationships with high-level talent, as well as clients, and are overwhelmed by the amount of events the city provides. Last week, among numerous other events for Creative Week, Brooks and I spent 2 days at the Creative Unconference sponsored by the One Club and Google. The format is simple: the participants create the agenda and ask for others in the conference to engage in their topic of discussion. You write down a topic old-school style on a piece of construction paper with a large (scented!) marker, pose these to the group, break and then venture to the group topic where you would like to contribute your time and energy. You can even switch between presentation discussions. Luckily, Brooks and I could tag team.

Highlights were the topics “The New Creative Agency” held by Matt Groves of Goody, Silverstein and Partners and “Building Creative Teams” led by Nick Law from R/GA. The overarching theme is that agencies are going to need to be flexible. The days of only needing Art Director and Copywriting teams are almost extinct. They are inundated with new systems, technological advances, blogs, twitter, facebook, engagement applications, iPhone applications, API; it seems it’s become more about the art of making things and the influx of information where once it was solely about the art of storytelling. The struggle for most agencies is keeping track of all of these advances while still trying to maintain the heart of what they do best. How do they communicate this within a new structure that changes so dramatically and consistently? Enter the creative technologist.

A self-proclaimed “geek” caught my attention immediately. Love those geeks. Richard Schatzberger of BBH is a Creative Technologist. He promotes the latest and greatest in technology while fluidly being able to take this digital lexicon and explain it in a way that clients and creatives can understand. Simply put, he doesn’t speak in code. What are the other overriding qualities besides being a tech geek? You need to be adaptable so you can move from team to team; the ideas created for the strategic group are going to vary greatly from the development team. You need to be good at making ideas better and more engaging: create a prototype so the team can hold it in their hands and play with it, look at the project through a new lens, create a different viewpoint, make the idea more viable. You need to be knowledgeable in tech trending. You need to get out into the real world and see how people are engaging with it. You need to be able to talk about hard-core technology, new platforms and API, make it sound fun and then be able to produce it. You need to be able to make RFID sound more interesting then Ashton Kutcher updating his Facebook status. For me, it’s easy. I own the entire Battlestar Galactica series. But, for storytellers, this will take an alchemist according to Richard. And that’s the real role of the creative technologist.

With all this insight and confluence of ideas, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Are we getting more or less connected? I sat drinking coffee yesterday at my local coffee shop in Prospect Heights trying to wake up (remember Gina and I were out until 6am?). With the little Italian I know, I recognize a young girl squabbling with her aunt about doing what she wants to do full-time without the support of her famiglia. I heard “disegno grafico” and we started chatting; she was a young graphic designer looking for work. I checked out her portfolio and gave her some advice on her resume. She’s going to teach me how to cook gnocchi. We did add each other to our facebook pages and I told her to follow 52 Limited on Twitter to hear about our latest and greatest events. Still, I’m consistently reminded that among all of these advances and distractions, the best form of connection is still meeting people face to face.

For more information on the Creative Unconference, go to http://www.creativeunconference.com/home/.

Introducing 52 LTD, creative resourcing from New York to Portland.

Portland, Oregon and New York City. While different in many ways, they are two cities where creative is king and creative expression is celebrated. This shared allegiance to creativity is why 52 LTD, Portland’s leading provider of creative resourcing, chose New York City as the home of our second location.

Our new downtown 52 office will start out primarily servicing the print, interactive and motion design industries with plans to expand that to the full-range of creative industries we service back in Portland. In the meantime, we are already working to have the same positive impact on New York’s creative culture and community as we’ve had on Portland’s, through numerous local events like our DesignSpeaks guest lecture series.

So whether you’re looking to find full-time help for your growing business or just need a little extra creative firepower on a project basis, contact 52 LTD or learn more about who we are and what we do at the newly redesigned 52LTD.com.

52 LTD. Now in PDX and NYC. And newly designed at 52LTD.com.

For years, 52 LTD has helped fill the creative resourcing needs of ad agencies, design firms and other creative companies around the Portland area, as well as help Portland freelancers become working freelancers. But now, 52 is taking our bag of resourcing tricks to a bigger stage – one of the biggest stages around with the opening of an office in New York City. With the addition of this NYC office, we can truly say that our creative services reach from coast to coast.

And we couldn’t open a new office with an old website, so we have completely redesigned the look and updated the content at 52LTD.com. So come check it out and see what we’re up to, the latest creative openings from PDX to NYC, and everything you’d want to know about our brand new office.

Contact Sara or Patricia at 503 517-0052 to check some creative projects off your list.

Or visit us at www.52ltd.com.

You’ve come to know Designspeaks for its diversity of speakers, each sharing their own unique perspective. From Byron Ferris to Jelly Helm, Aaron Draplin to Andrea Marks, Modern Dog to Patrick Coyne, Designspeaks has set out to introduce and re-acquaint. To inform and engage. And to gather and celebrate the most intriguing thinkers and makers within our region.

So now you need to come to know Frank Chimero. If you’re not familiar with his work, you likely haven’t been paying attention. If you do know him, you’re likely better off for it. Since his move to Portland this spring, Chimero has already made an indelible impression upon the local design community—by way of his teaching, his design writing (and provocative musings), and his flourishing Office of Frank Chimero. Of course, Frank tends to get things done a bit more quickly than most, garnering, among other honors, inclusion in Print magazine’s coveted 20 Under 30: The New Visual Artists Exhibition.

Frank is an illustrator, designer, educator and writer in Portland, Oregon. His fascination with the creative process and visual experience informs all of his work. Each piece is the part of an exploration in finding wit, surprise, honesty and joy in the world around us. His work has been recognized by Print Magazine, HOW Magazine, Step Magazine, the Society of Illustrators and has been featured in numerous books.

Catch Frank at Designspeaks:
Thursday May 13th 2010 7:00pm – 9:00pm
The Cleaners at Ace Hotel 403 SW 10th Ave.
(Corner of SW 10th and Stark) Portland, OR 97205

We’re covering beer, wine, and noshie foods. ID required for big kid drinks.

ONLINE REGISTRATION IS UNAVAILABLE FOR THIS EVENT. We will accept cash and checks at the door. Unfortunately, we will not accept credit cards for this event. For the AIGA member discount, you will need to your AIGA membership card. Learn more at: http://aigaportland.org/events/designspeaks-frank-chimero
Members $10 Non-Members $20 Students $5
Planning to Attend? Please RSVP via e-mail and include your full name and whether you are an AIGA member. Payment will be accepted at the event. We will make every attempt to accommodate walk-ins.